Attack of the Giant Gooseberries

    Another crop coming on nicely at the moment are our gooseberries. We have a 30m long row so harvest 50-100kg of fruit during the season. We recently cut back the undergrowth around the plants, which was starting to stifle them but they are still cropping really well.

    The rainfall and lack of sunshine of late, have had their effect and the fruit still has a week or two before it starts to ripen properly but soon we shall start picking. We wait patiently for the ripening fruit to start changing colour.

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    Some will be sold at the farm shop in Picton St. Bristol and some will be frozen or used fresh for the staff and volunteers on the farm. Did you know that some 19th and early 20th-century cultivators produced single gooseberries that weighed over 50grammes! I think we will stick with our lil ones and I look forward to some gooseberry crumble in a few weeks time!

The Crops Are A Growing

    It's been a while since our last blog post but life is busy here at RMF. Our crops are growing fast, now that the sunshine has arrived. We are transplanting leeks and potatoes to the fields around the poly tunnels and also the big fields. Last week we finally got the spuds in after weeks of rain, when the soil was too wet for the planting to commence.

    The job was completed by Richard, Sirio and Giammarco, together with one of our trusty Ferguson tractors. The Italians are volunteer WWOOFers with amazing potato planting skills, among many others. The job was all done in just 3 hours but the

workers did take a short break when we were inundated by a 10 minute hail storm!

    Although they toughed it out for a while, the soil started getting sticky so the work was abandoned.

    It finally dried out and we finished. Spuds done, time for a glass of cider!